A woman caught in torrential rain in Brooklyn says another woman called the cops on her while she was waiting for an Uber near her front door -- and it’s all on video.
New York musician Darsell Obregon was walking to the train in Park Slope on July 22 when she was caught in a rainstorm, she said. She ducked under an awning on Fifth Avenue and ordered and an Uber when she says a woman opened her door and told her to leave.
“This young lady comes down guns blazing from the beginning and was just like, “You can’t stand there,"" she said.
Obregon said she initially apologized, because she understands not wanting to have people stand by your door -- even though she was standing on the public sidewalk -- but when the woman told her she was going to call the police if she did not leave immediately, she decided to stand her ground, and started recording.
“It’s the principle,” she said. ”There’s no need for me to explain myself to you, for me it’s mind-boggling how this turned out, I was dumbfounded.”
In the video, the woman is heard on the phone to police describing Obregon and telling the operator “I absolutely do not know her, so I want her off my private property."
When Obregon’s Uber arrives, the woman follows her to the car and opens the door so the car cannot drive. When the Uber driver goes to shut the door, the woman tells him he will be assisting in a crime if he does so. As the car drives off, the woman is seen trying to take the Uber driver’s plates. “She’s trying to leave,” she says to the operator.
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NYPD confirmed it received a 911 call for a dispute regarding a woman “standing on a stoop refusing to leave,” it said. “The job was marked 91, which is non-crime committed,” the NYPD said.
After posting the video to social media with the hashtag #whiteprivilege and #thisisAmerica, Obregon was met with a media firestorm. Her video now has over one million views. Mistakenly assuming she was black, media outlets picked up the story, reporting that a white woman called the police on a black woman waiting for an Uber.
Obregon says she identifies as being a white Hispanic. “I am not black and I have never said that I was and was not pretending to be,” she said. Obregon said she had been speaking with her boyfriend that morning about other stories in the media of racial profiling, and it was on her mind. “How insane that these white women have been calling the cops and using them as a weapon, and yes it often is against black and brown people,” she said.
“This young lady was harassing and mistreating me and there was no threat to her, she did not feel afraid -- if she did she would not try to insult me on the phone... There’s an epidemic of women of white women calling the police for absolutely nothing, because they say that they're scared.”
Obregon said she hopes this experience will lead to more talking between people to help understand the issues at play.
“I wanted everyone to see this behavior, what's happening in New York -- in Brooklyn, New York -- to expose it and hopefully we can move forward.”
